Bargaining was a way of life among the Djinn, but that didn’t make it any more welcome at this moment. I needed a friend, not a mercenary. But I’d left my friends behind, and Rashid was what I had left.

“Don’t look at me that way,” he said, and leaned on the handlebars of my bike, propping his chin on his palm. “Don’t you want to save those children? Isn’t that the heroic Cassiel I’ve been hearing so much about?”

“Price,” I growled.

“Simple,” he said. “I want you to perform a service for me. It won’t stretch your abilities in the least, and best of all, it fits your personality very nicely. In fact, I should think you’ll find my request a definite pleasure.”

I gritted my teeth. “I won’t couple with you, like some animal in the forest. Don’t disgrace us both by making the suggestion.”

He managed to appear both shocked and delighted. “Would I ask that? Well, I might now; so kind of you to put it on the menu of options available. But no, I promise you, my request has nothing whatsoever to do with reproduction, human or otherwise. Quite the opposite, in fact.”

That cast a shadow over the conversation, a deliberate one. I frowned as I stared at him, reading nothing in his expression or his inhuman violet eyes. “Meaning?”

“Meaning that I’d like you to kill a man for me,” Rashid said, and dropped all his playacting. In this, at least, he was deadly serious. “I trust that’s not beyond your abilities. In fact, I think you positively enjoy it.”

He was not completely wrong in that, but I’d not give him the satisfaction of saying so. “Whom do you wish me to kill?” I asked.

“No one you know. It has nothing to do with you.”

“And why can’t you kill him yourself?”

“Because I made another bargain elsewhere, and now I find myself ... restrained,” Rashid said. “But it doesn’t mean I can’t ask someone to do it on my behalf. It’s a moment’s work for you, Cassiel, and if you do it, I will save your innocent children from the clutches of the evil Djinn. What say you? I think the advantages are all to you.”

As bargains went, it wasn’t bad, but there were unknowns in it, things that made me feel uneasy. I can’t claim that my conscience would prevent it; my conscience was not human, though there were moments when I liked to pretend. I had contemplated murder in the past, and still did think about it on a regular basis. The reason I didn’t act on it—or at least, not usually—was that it so often came with complications.

So might this, as simple as it seemed.

“How far away is this unfortunate person?” I asked.

“Luckily for you, only about an hour’s ride, if you don’t spare the horsepower. He has a tent struck out in the woods. You don’t even have to look into his eyes as you end him; a simple accident would suffice for my needs. Maybe something in a nice rockfall, or a tree flattening him. I’d prefer something that painful and lingering, but your pleasure.”

“His name.”

Rashid flipped his hand dismissively. “You hardly need that.”

“I may not need it, but I want it.”

His eyebrows rose, then drew together. “I have said, you don’t know him.”

“Is he a Warden?” Silence. I matched him frown for frown. “You want a Warden destroyed. At such a dangerous time, when the humans need all the help they can get?”

Rashid lost all his playfulness, and his beauty, as he glared at me. Anger sharpened the angles of his face, and the bones seemed to take on edges beneath the skin. “This one needs to be killed,” he said, quite softly. “This one killed a Djinn.”

There were ways to kill a Djinn, but not many, and few were within the reach of a human, even a Warden. Where it had happened, the end for the Djinn had been slow, agonizing, and appalling. “How?”

“Does it matter? A Djinn no longer exists, one who lived thousands of human lifetimes and was worth more than a river of human blood and a mountain of human bones. A Djinn who was my child.” That last was a hiss, like steam escaping from a vent deep in the earth’s core. “This Warden had him in a bottle, once. Then when he let him go, he ordered him to fight an Ifrit, to the death. For profit. My son died for money. Tell me I should show mercy, Cassiel. Tell me.”

I couldn’t. I watched Rashid’s face for a long, silent moment, imagining what it would be like to know one’s child had been devoured alive, eaten by a creature that existed by ending other Djinn. Rashid would have felt it, I thought. Connected by power and heritage, he would have felt every second of his progeny’s ending.

“Why now?” I asked him. “Why here? You must have had months to gain your revenge.”

Rashid’s face changed again, melting back into its pleasing lines. “Oh, I tried,” he said. “He had another bottle and another Djinn he could torture and destroy as he wished. He bargained for her release, under the condition that I should never harm him. I made this deal.” That grin came again, but this time it had darkness in it, and cruel amusement seemed to fuel his glowing eyes to even greater brightness. “I made that bargain to save an innocent life. You should understand that, Cassiel. But I never said I wouldn’t find others to harm him.”

That was the Djinn’s way; bargains were sacred, but there was no deal a human could make that a Djinn couldn’t find a way around, or through, or under. We’d had too long to learn our skills, and by nature we were twisting and devious. It was part of our charm.

“How do I know you’re telling me the truth?” I asked him. Rashid might be lying to me, for any number of reasons of his own; there were no codes between us that prevented lying to achieve a goal. If I failed to ask the relevant questions, then that was my problem, not his. And Rashid could spin a tale, a good one.

I felt that this one might actually be true, however.

“I’ll swear,” he said immediately. “Thrice. On anything you think necessary.”

That was an open oath, and very powerful to us. I considered for a second, then nodded. “Swear upon the Mother,” I said. No Djinn would swear on the Mother and not mean it. “Swear that every word you have said to me during this conversation has been true in every aspect.”

He considered, too; I was asking for something exacting, and if he’d lied in even the smallest detail, he wouldn’t swear. The consequences were too great.

Instead, he nodded, and said, “I swear on the Mother, and the blood of the Mother, that every word I have spoken to you during this conversation today has been true,” he said. “I have not lied. Is that sufficient?”

“Swear it three times,” I said. There was nothing more binding than that. And, to my surprise, he did so without blinking.

I said, “If I fulfill your request to me, you’ll overtake those who’ve abducted the children in Denver, stop them, and return the children to their families, or at least to the place from which they were taken?”

“I so swear,” he said. “If that Warden dies, I’ll save your children. I’m the only one who can, Cassiel. But I won’t act until he’s dead.”

That seemed fair enough. “Done,” I said.

“Done,” Rashid repeated. “The deal is struck.”

He leaned back, and gathered shadows around him. When they settled, they’d formed a black suit, cloth that slithered like silk, draping him in perfectly tailored lines. On his feet shoes formed, in the latest style, polished and perfect. He even added a tie that looked spun of moonbeams and dreams and diamonds. It suited him very well.

“Next time,” he said, “we’ll bargain for something more intimate.” His grin was half a leer this time. “I’ll wait here until it’s done.”

“Where is he?”

For answer, he created a map in midair in front of me, glowing golden lines with a bloodred star marking the location of my quarry. He was right; it was about an hour’s ride, and I didn’t look back as I gunned the engine, leaned forward, and sped off on my mission.